Handmade Mail for Coraline

Published on February 05, 2009.

For the last few months, handmade boxes have been showing up at the feet of bloggers with such contents as severed plastic hands, dolls and bottles of Witchy Blue nail polish. This week, Creativity got a similar surprise: box 50/50, just in time for the release of the animated stop-motion feature Coraline on February 6. (More photos below.)

Wieden + Kennedy, Portland sent out the 50 one-of-a-kind boxes, each handmade by the agency's studio team, to get bloggers from NOTCOT to a toys enthusiast, talking about the film, the first feature from Nike cofounder and chairman Phil Knight's animation studio Laika. (Check out a catalog of the 50 boxes, here.) The boxes, each embodying a different theme, contained artifacts from Coraline, for which hundreds of jointed puppets and sets were constructed by hand from everyday objects like popcorn, fishing wire and glue. A note, in a wax-seal envelope, directed the recipient online to access a video via a password that was transcribed on a key enclosed in the box.

The project covers both old-school stop-motion and a first for 3D film; Coraline is the first stop-motion animated feature shot entirely in stereoscopic 3D--and will be in wide release in 2D and 3D theaters nationwide on Friday.

Directed by Henry Selick, who was behind The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach, Coraline is based on the eponymous children's story by Neil Gaiman about a girl who stumbles into a parallel universe in her own home.

The press boxes were the first wave of the campaign, extensive outdoor, interactive storefront displays, a Coraline edition Nike sneaker and a trailer followed.

UPDATE:W K Radio will broadcast an interview with NPR's Ketzel Levine and Coraline director Henry Selick on Friday at 1pm EST. The interview will also be available as a podcast.